


The Gravity of Water

by thesearchforbluejello



Series: Rogue Oneshots [4]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Jyn and K fight a lot, Rebelcaptain Week, and everyone else has to put up with it, just lots of, no one hit warp 10 so there are no lizards here, not to be confused with The Shape of Water
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 13:31:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15292578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesearchforbluejello/pseuds/thesearchforbluejello
Summary: Jyn proves that she would, in fact, jump off a cliff for Cassian.





	The Gravity of Water

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant for the prompt "survive," but it's a little late. Thanks to Thealorn for the beta (and helping me salvage this trashfire) and to Emilie for laughing at my jokes.

Cassian has had a headache since they left the hangar bay on Echo Base, and the argument that's been stewing between K and Jyn as they prep to leave the ship is the last thing he wants to listen to.

"I'm merely trying to point out--" K begins.

"I already said no," Jyn snaps, not even looking up from her bag.

"Why won't you listen to me?" K says, crossing his arms in a petulant move that Cassian has noted is occurring with far greater frequency since Jyn joined their team just a few months ago. K would never admit it, of course; Cassian knows he'd sooner rip out his own circuitry.

"I am listening to you," Jyn returns, "and I am not giving you a blaster. People see an Imperial droid with a blaster, and they're going to turn the other way. We need people to talk to us, which is why you're staying here, without a blaster."

"People would be more likely to talk to me with a blaster than they would be to talk to you at any given point in time," he says peevishly.

Jyn's eyes narrow and she opens her mouth to reply, but Cassian interrupts. "Enough!" he snaps. "We have a job to do. Finish arguing later."

K looks from Jyn to Cassian and back to Jyn, making a faint whirring noise that she knows equates to a sigh. Jyn looks at him sidelong as she slips her blades into the holsters on her wrists, waiting for whatever comment is about to be tossed her way.

"My point is--" he finally says.

"Why, are you too chicken to--" she snaps, but Bodhi interrupts as he comes down from the cockpit.

"Hey, hey, that's not a very nice thing to say."

"No, it's not," K agrees. "Have you already forgotten that time I saved your life?"

She stands up. "You're blackmailing me with that? Just so I'll give you a blaster?"

He seems to consider this for a moment. "I saved your life," he says again.

"You stabbed me with a huge needle."

"To save your life," he says sagely.

Chirrut chuckles from the doorway. "Neither of you are going to win this argument," he says.

Jyn just scowls and looks to Cassian. "Let's go," she snaps. 

Chirrut and Baze follow them down the ramp, headed for a cantina on the east side of the port to rendezvous with an Alliance contact and arrange the transfer of supplies. It's a job that they, unsurprisingly, excel at; Chirrut's silver-tongued charisma has secured the rebellion several deals that Cassian grudgingly admits he wouldn't have gotten on his own. Baze sitting menacingly at his side helps too, Cassian knows. 

Jyn's in a foul mood as they head to the opposite side of the city, following the sound of sea-birds and boats as they walk along the inside curve of the bay. Cassian lets the silence between them stretch on for a few minutes before saying, "He's just trying to irritate you, you know?"

"I just hope he doesn't think I'm going to thank him more than once," she replies. There's a weight to her words that belie more than irritation with K's less-than-sunny disposition. K's badgering about having a blaster veers too close to Scarif, too close to dread, too close to being trapped in a locked vault and listening to him die.

Her face is blank, guarded, and Cassian struggles with his words. "He doesn't understand," he says slowly, "how we think about death. To him, when his previous body was destroyed, he just lost a little information. He knows... But he doesn't understand."

"I'd be happy to make him understand," she growls.

"No you wouldn't," Cassian says quietly. She presses her lips together, but her expression softens and she falls silent again.

The bay curves in a gentle semicircle, populated to the very edge of the low cliff-face with shops and homes, stacked in descending terraces as the land slopes downward. Jyn and Cassian follow a broad set of stone stairs down and down until they're almost at the edge of the water, threading through a bustling market of vendors in narrow stalls arguing with throngs of customers over their pricing. 

Jyn tries not to look at the ocean. 

"This way," Cassian says into her ear, voice pitched low enough for only her to hear. He guides her with a gentle grip on her arm, looking to anyone around them like they're just wandering among the stalls. 

Cassian slips away without a word when they reach the opposite edge of the market, melting into the fringes of the crowd to meet their contact alone. Jyn wanders, always in sight of the small shop on the corner, trying to blend in until she hears the door open again. She keeps her back to the ocean.

***

An hour at least has passed and Jyn is still wandering. Chirrut and Baze have already commed to let her know they're back at the ship, waiting for her and Cassian to return. She'd updated them on her status-- still waiting, impatiently-- and silence had settled again, heavy across her shoulders. It makes her angry, in a way, how silence rankles her now sometimes, when just a few months ago silence had been all she'd had.

She turns to make another circuit of the market's edge and the sun glares in her eyes. It's late afternoon now and the bottom of the sun is violent against the edge of the sea, its reflection burning a trail ahead of it until it dissolves into the water.

Jyn strays to the railing at edge of the cliffside, ornately wrought metal bars chest-high and overlooking a sheer drop to the ocean where the waves beat the rock. 

The water is gold. It's frighteningly, startling familiar. There's ash and dust on her tongue and the grit of sand in her teeth. The metal of the railing is warm against her palms and she realizes she's gripping it too tightly, staring down into the water, holding her breath.

She takes a step back, suddenly, releasing the railing. She moves to wander the crowd again, the afterimage of the sun still blue against her eyelids.

In hindsight, she will realize that she should have noticed the second things went wrong, when the door to the shop slammed open, thwacking against the worn wood, when angry voices rose, audible even over the low roar of the market to her right. It was the sea, she knows later. She couldn't think past the sea.

She finally turns at a shout that's familiar enough to freeze her blood. Cassian is being thrown over the railing before she can react, falling out of her sight. She runs back to the cliffside, but she can't see him below her. She runs without thinking to where the men are walking away, calmly, as though they haven't condemned him to death. She's over the railing without breaking stride because one of the few things she knows about Cassian's life is that he never learned to swim. 

She hits the water boots-first with a deafening rush that dissolves into a roaring silence. She's so disoriented by the weightless suspension that she loses herself to it for a moment, not knowing which is the way back to the surface. She blinks away the burn of the salt in her eyes, looking up toward the blinding sunlight, orienting herself, and turns away to begin searching the darkening gradient of the water for Cassian. 

Her lungs are wrenching against her desperate need to hold her breath when she finally sees him, below her. She swims downward anyway. Grabbing a fistful of his jacket, she pulls him towards her-- or her towards him, it's difficult to say in the gravity of water-- until she can get her arms around his chest and kick upwards toward the surface. His dead weight in her arms makes the ascent harder than she expected, burning her lungs and straining her arms, dragging her downwards and slowing their movement to a painful crawl. They're almost to the surface when he starts slipping out of her grasp; she gasps what should be just small sip of air, but seawater floods her throat. She gags on it, coughing it out, holding Cassian tighter and pushing again for the surface. Sunlight darts and dances in unpredictable patterns on the water above them and Jyn sees little dark spots flickering in her vision. 

She draws in an accidental breath before they make it to the surface, the saltwater burning into her lungs. The sun is blinding as they finally breach the waves. The ocean is shades of gold like a shattered mirror and Jyn coughs up seawater.

Her back strikes a rock below the surface and the tide almost drags her around it, but she pulls Cassian in front of her and keeps them against it. The shore behind them is jagged with rocks, waves whipping white around them before crashing into the sheer rock face of the cliff itself. She's too exhausted already to keep them here long, but she knows they won't stand a chance if the tide has its way. 

She sets shaking fingers against Cassian's pulse and finds it weak and thready. His chest doesn't rise under her grasp. She turns his face towards her, pinches his nose closed, presses her lips to his and forces air into his lungs. She crushes him to herself, trying to force the air and water out of his lungs before she breathes for him, again and again and again.

He finally coughs, spattering them both with seawater.

Jyn presses her forehead to his temple and tries to breathe past the graying edges of her vision. The water buffets them against the rock, grinding her back against the sharp edges, but all she notices is the rise and fall of Cassian's chest beneath her arms. He turns his head so they're cheek to cheek and whispers, "What happened?"

"You're a kriffing idiot," she whispers.

"Yeah," he says. She presses her lips to the corner of his mouth, the scruff of his beard rough against her face. "I got thrown over the cliff, didn't I." She nods and he can feel the motion without looking at her. "You jumped in?" She nods again. "You should've gone back to the ship," he says, and she's not surprised at all by the edge in his voice, because she'd be angry too. But that doesn't stop her own irritation from bubbling up.

"And leave you to drown?" she says flatly.

"It would be better than dying with me."

"Hypocrite," she snaps.

He presses his nose to her jaw. "Maybe," he says.

"Definitely."

"My comm is gone," he says after a moment.

"Mine too. They'll find us." Another wave crashes against them, spraying up into their faces, slamming Jyn back against the rock so hard she almost loses her grip on Cassian. He holds tight to her arms, instinctively kicking to keep their heads above the surface. She gasps, spitting water.

"Are you alright?" he asks.

"Yeah." The sky is fading into red; the sun is just a narrow arc, sinking rapidly into the water. It's almost dark, and they'll be indistinguishable from the surface in the failing light. 

The waves keep crashing over them as they watch the sun disappear beneath the horizon, one moment just a sliver of light, the next moment gone entirely. Jyn's mouth aches from constantly spitting and swallowing saltwater, her back burning from salt in the ruddy scrapes the rock has carved into her skin. Cassian's lungs are still burning from inhaling so much water and his head is screaming from being deprived of oxygen for so long. The sky is a gradient of red and orange but darkness has already seeped into the little cove.

Water floods over Jyn's head again and she sputters. "Still okay?" Cassian asks. 

"Yeah." Her arms are numb from the strain of pulling Cassian to the surface and keeping ahold of him. She opens her mouth to say something to him but another wave crests over them. Cassian slips in her grip; she moves to get a better hold on him but tumbles backward over the rock.

The current drags her downward, away from Cassian and into the deep.

Before she blacks out, the water coalesces into the shape of a hand.

***

Cassian wakes on the floor of the ship. K is standing above him, water shedding off his shoulders, rope tied around him and trailing away on the floor. Hands roll Cassian onto his side; a rough clap on his back has him coughing and retching up water he didn't even realize was in his chest. He groans against the floor. A hand is on his shoulder and another is rubbing his back, slowly. 

"S'okay," Jyn says behind him. He rolls onto his back again and looks over at her, her hand still on his shoulder, propped on one elbow, sopping wet and staring at him with a furrowed brow and parted lips. He closes his eyes and smiles. "What?"

"You," he says.

K holds their bags out to Jyn. "You should change your clothes before you develop hypothermia when we jump into hyperspace." 

Jyn stands and takes the bags from him. She may not remember the actual trip from the water to the ship, but it's obvious that K had risked his own safety for the sake of theirs. She knows he's got another back-up of his programming hidden away somewhere, but knowing that does little to diminish the impact of his actions. "I'm sorry for calling you a chicken," she says.

K is quiet for a moment. "You should be. It's incorrect, as I am neither an organic being, nor do I have feathers."

She grins at him. "Was that... Was that a joke?"

"No."

"I think that was a joke."

"It must have been some bad code. I'll run a diagnostic immediately." He stomps off, still dripping and trailing rope behind him.

Jyn shakes her head. She guides Cassian to his feet with her hands gripping his elbows, waiting until he's steady before releasing him. They close the door to one of the small, empty storage rooms before changing into dry clothes. Jyn tries to dry her hair with a spare shirt, but doesn't have much luck. Cassian lays one of the bedrolls on the floor and sits down, tossing his wet clothes into a pile by the door. They won't dry on the ship, not in the cold of hyperspace. 

Jyn ties her hair back again and closes her bag. "I should go check on them," she says, looking toward the door. 

"They're fine," he says. She doesn't look at him. "Jyn, they're fine." She does turn to look at him then. Grief is written plainly on her face, grief for what almost happened in the golden light.

She joins him without speaking. He lays on his side and she settles against his chest, arms tight around him. She breathes him in and falls asleep to the smell of the sea on his skin.

**Author's Note:**

> There might be a Moana and an I, Robot joke in here. Because Alan Tudyk is that great.
> 
> Songs today are: We Sink by Of Monsters and Men and Muddy Waters by LP (which blew my mind when Emilie and I discovered it in the trailer for In the Valley of Gods, which is the new game from the creators of Firewatch)


End file.
